Saturday, February 20, 2016

Exclusive: After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels
balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply
lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni
“allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the
risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last October said in
a little noticed comment
that the United States was ready to take “direct action on the ground” in
Syria. Vice President Joe Biden said in Istanbul last month that if peace talks
in Geneva failed, the United States was prepared for a “military solution” in
that country.

The peace talks collapsed on Wednesday even before
they began. A day later Saudi Arabia said it is ready to invade Syria
while Turkey is building up forces at its Syrian border.

Saudi King Salman meets with President Barack Obama
at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official
White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The U.N. aims to restart the talks on Feb. 25 but
there is little hope they can begin in earnest as the Saudi-run opposition has
set numerous conditions. The most important is that Russia stop its military
operation in support of the Syrian government, which has been making serious
gains on the ground.

A day after the talks collapsed, it was revealed that
Turkey has begun preparations for an invasion of Syria, according
to the Russian Defense Ministry. On Thursday, ministry spokesman Igor
Konashenkov said: “We have good reasons to believe that Turkey is actively
preparing for a military invasion of a sovereign state – the Syrian
Arab Republic. We’re detecting more and more signs of Turkish armed forces
being engaged in covert preparations for direct military actions
in Syria.” The U.N. and the State Department had no comment. But this
intelligence was supported
by a sound of alarm from Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican
People’s Party (CHP).

Turkey, which has restarted its war against Kurdish
PKK guerillas inside Turkey, is determined to crush the emergence of an
independent Kurdish state inside Syria as well. Turkish strongman Recep
Tayyip Erdogan stopped the Syrian Kurds from attending the aborted Geneva
talks.

A Turkish invasion would appear poised to attack the
Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which is allied with the PKK. The Syrian (and Iraqi)
Kurds, with the Syrian army, are the main ground forces fighting the Islamic
State. Turkey is pretending to fight ISIS, all the while actually supporting its quest to
overthrow Assad, also a Turkish goal.

Saudi Arabia then said on Thursday it was prepared to
send its ground forces into Syria if asked. Carter welcomed
it. Of course Biden, Erdogan, Carter and the Saudis are all saying a ground
invasion would fight ISIS. But their war against ISIS has been half-hearted at
best and they share ISIS’ same enemy: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. If the
U.S. were serious about fighting ISIS it would have at least considered a
proposal by Russia to join a coalition
as the U.S. did against the Nazis.

The Prize of Aleppo

The excuse of the Geneva collapse is a ruse. There
was little optimism the talks would succeed. The real reason for the coming
showdown in Syria is the success of Russia’s military intervention in defense
of the Syrian government against the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
Many of these groups are supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United
States in pursuit of overthrowing Assad.

These three nations are all apparently poised for a
ground invasion of Syria just as, by no coincidence, the Syrian Arab Army with
Russian air cover is pushing to liberate perhaps the greatest prize in the
Syrian civil war — Aleppo, the country’s commercial capital. The Russians and
Syrians have already cut
off Turkey’s supply lines to rebels in the city.

On Saturday, Bahrain and the United Arab
Emirates joined the Saudis in saying they would intervene only
as part of a U.S.-led ground invasion. The Obama administration has maintained
that it would not send U.S. ground forces into Syria, beyond a few hundred
special forces.

But these U.S. allies, driven by fierce regional
ambitions, appear to be putting immense pressure on the Obama administration to
decide if it is prepared to lose Syria. Though Carter said he welcomed the Saudi declaration he made no commitment
about U.S. ground forces. But Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri told
al-Arabiya TV that a decision could be made to intervene at a NATO summit in
Brussels next week. Carter said the matter would be on the agenda.

The U.S. cannot likely stand by and watch Russia win
in Syria. At the very least it wants to be on the ground to meet them at a
modern-day Elbe
and influence the outcome.

But things could go wrong in a war in which the U.S.
and Russia are not allies, as they were in World War II. Despite this, the U.S.
and its allies see Syria as important enough to risk confrontation with Russia,
with all that implies. It is not at all clear though what the U.S. interests
are in Syria to take such a risk.

From the outset of Russia’s intervention the U.S. and
its allies have wanted Moscow out of the Syrian theater. They seem to be only
waiting for the right opportunity. That opportunity may be now — forced by
events.

Former U.S. national security adviser and current
Obama adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said
last October in the Financial Times that, “The Russian naval and air presences
in Syria are vulnerable, isolated geographically from their homeland. They
could be ‘disarmed’ if they persist in provoking the U.S.”

Turkey’s downing in November of a Russian warplane
that allegedly veered 17 seconds into Turkish territory appeared to be very
much a provocation to draw Russia into a conflict to allow NATO to drive Moscow
out of Syrian skies. But Russia was too smart for that and instead imposed
sanctions on Turkey, while urging Russian tourists not to visit the country,
which has hurt
the Turkish economy.

A Battleground of Empires

As a fertile crossroad between Asia and Africa backed
by desert, Syrian territory has been fought over for centuries. Pharaoh Ramses
II defeated the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh near Lake Homs in 1247 BCE.
The Persians conquered Syria in 538 BCE. Alexander the Great took it 200 years
later and the Romans grabbed Syria in 64 BCE.

Islam defeated the Byzantine Empire there at the
Battle of Yarmuk in 636. In one of the first Shia-Sunni battles, Ali failed to
defeat Muawiyah in 657 at Siffin along the Euphrates near the Iraq-Syria
border. Damascus became the seat of the Caliphate until a coup in 750 moved it
to Baghdad.

Waves of Crusaders next invaded Syria beginning in
1098. Egyptian Mamluks took the country in 1250 and the Ottoman Empire began in
1516 at its victory at Marj Dabik, 44 kilometers north of Aleppo — about where
Turkish supplies are now being cut off. France double-crossed
the Arabs and gained control of Syria in 1922 after the Ottoman
collapse. The Nazis were pushed out in the momentous 1941 Battle of
Damascus.

We may be now looking at an epic war with similar
historical significance. All these previous battles, as momentous as they were,
were regional in nature.

What we are potentially facing is a war that goes
beyond the Soviet-U.S. proxy wars of the Cold War era, and beyond the proxy war
that has so far taken place in the five-year Syrian civil war. Russia is
already present in Syria. The entry of the United States and its allies would
risk a direct confrontation between the two largest nuclear powers on earth.

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist
based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London
Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street
Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@gmail.com and
followed on Twitter at @unjoe.